


Tired of That Part of Me

by Mizzy



Series: Spideytorch [2]
Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Marvel Secret Wars Battleworlds, Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Melodrama, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5027206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizzy/pseuds/Mizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter's been avoiding Johnny, and Johnny wants to know why. Maybe it would help if Peter knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tired of That Part of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an AU where the incursions and Battle World were all actually a simulated reality — Arno Stark's Extremis experiments gone wacky — and everyone's adjusting to a rewound world, where the last few years that everyone remembers didn't actually happen. Smack that reset button, baby, I do what I want.
> 
> (Also how many Spideytorch fics can I even come up with inspired by lines from _Community_ 's theme song, anyway?)  
> #

Peter's Spider-sense isn't tingling when he climbs into his apartment through the window, which is only bizarre when he lands on the ratty carpet and is confronted by undeniable evidence that there is  _someone_ in his apartment.

Peter reaches for the baseball bat lying against his nightstand. Baseball bats are a permanent fixture for every apartment in Peter's part of the city. He edges forwards, squinting through his bedroom door towards the sitting room.

Whomever has broken into his place should have quickly realized there is nothing worth stealing. And they've apparently decided to sleep on Peter's sagging couch instead, based on the person-shaped lump he can now see through the arch of the door. The man is curled up around Peter's deformed couch cushions, the long curve of his back all Peter can really see.

The baseball bat slips from his grip when he recognizes the tuft of blond hair on the man's bowed head; his chest tightens automatically, though, and he hates the feeling, _hates_ it, but he can't stop it either. It builds up in his core like a tornado tightening every coil of feeling inside him.

Johnny Storm never used to make him feel like this. But the Battleworld changed everything.

"Do you always climb through your apartment window?" Johnny asks. His voice is muffled by the cushions.

"Habit, I guess," Peter says. For a moment he's paralyzed. He shouldn't not know how to move in his own apartment. He shouldn't not know how to move in front of Johnny. Every movement instead is uncomfortably magnified. Peter's never been more aware of his own limbs, never more aware that he has to consciously move them. He forces himself to walk over to his overstuffed armchair, to sit down. It feels like his knees are creaking.

"Oh," Johnny says.

There's silence and it's uncomfortable and silence between them has never been uncomfortable. Johnny's never broken into his apartment before. Peter's never felt like he was going to explode, just from being in the same space as Johnny.

Everything's new and painful. Everything sucks.

"I couldn't sleep," Johnny says. Maybe the silence is uncomfortable for him, too. Maybe he's lying there wondering why Peter hasn't said anything, why he hasn't spoken up first. Why Peter hasn’t had the decency to ask if he's okay.

Peter wants to open his mouth and say it, be polite. He tries. What actually comes out makes him turn his head away in shame. "What are you doing here?"

Johnny doesn't turn over to face him. Doesn't see his shame. He can probably hear it, in the too-harsh hiss of Peter's question. "Couldn't—" Johnny starts, but his voice is a deep rasp. "Couldn't sleep at home," he manages, on his second try. This time he does turn around and if Peter had his voice, the sight would lose it.

Johnny rarely lets himself out in public as anything less than perfect. But on Peter's couch he looks small, fragile, too pale. His eyes are bloodshot. His hair's sticking up every which way. He looks like he maybe came as a set with Peter's couch: beat-up, broken, and holding together by sheer will and determination.

"I don't think choosing my couch as a sleeping place was necessarily your best first choice," Peter says, and then realizes how it sounds. "I mean, the lumpiness of it."

Johnny's face does something complicated. "I didn't think you'd appreciate me turning up in your bed. You know, what with how you can't stand to be in the same space as me for longer than five minutes."

"That's not tr—" The lie gets stuck in Peter's throat and Johnny's stricken look realizing what that means is too painful; Peter hangs his head and stares at the threadbare carpet, swallowing hard. His eyes sting. No, he won't cry. It's not fair. Not when Johnny— Not when Johnny has been the one going through hell, and going, and going.

There's rustling from the couch. Johnny sitting up, leaning forwards, probably staring at Peter. Peter can't look. The carpet's wearing out near the table he keeps his cell phone charging on; he keeps nudging the table around and it's wearing a track into the polyester. "Are you going to tell me?" Johnny says. "What I did?"

Peter looks up so quickly that his neck hurts. "No, god, why would you think that you—" He flinches and swallows the rest of the sentence back, because he knows exactly why Johnny would think that. Since everyone woke up from Arno Stark's simulation, he's done nothing but flee from Johnny like he was on fire. Peter clenches his hands - unclenches and clenches again, and says, like the words have to be carved into the air, "You didn't do anything."

"You could have fooled me," Johnny says, and his eyes are hard, intent, focused on him. "Look, I know none of it was real— Nothing's been real for the longest time. But it felt real to me. To all of us."

Arno Stark had made sure of that. The simulation that fooled the world. He'd unleashed a strain of Extremis that infected the planet and made them believe that universes were smashing into each other. Everyone had believed that Doom had shattered the multiverse and patchworked it into another Battleworld, one made up of the best and worst of hundreds of realities.

Everyone had believed it because it felt so real.

"I know," Peter says, and he wants to look away. He can't bear the raw expression on Johnny's face. Peter takes a deep breath. "What do you want me to say, Johnny?"

"I don't know!" Johnny looks startled, like he hadn't expected a shout to come out of his mouth. His face flushes and the yell has tensed his body into angles and harsh lines. He instantly relaxes, but it's more defeat than anything. "I don't know," he says, softer. Twisted. A little anguished. "I probably shouldn't be here," he finishes, shaking his head and shifting like he's going to move soon.

"Johnny—" Peter says, but nothing follows that. He looks up at Johnny, who just throws him a look that rips down Peter's spine like the worst spider-sense tingle he can remember. Ominous has nothing on the sensation freezing him in place.

"Tell me what's wrong," Johnny says, slowly but not like he's having trouble speaking. Slow like he means it. Slow like the ultimatum it is. "Or I'm going. Out of here. Finito. For good. Friendship over." He levels Peter a dark look. "I deserve better than the way you've been treating me."

Peter's on board with that; it's a miserable bone-deep agreement.

"You can't, can you?" Johnny shakes his head and he looks away, staring at Peter's wall like it's as fascinating as Peter found the carpet earlier. "I really thought you were my best friend, Peter." His voice cracks on the word friend, and he can't stop shaking his head. "A friend would tell me why they're avoiding me. I burned for you, Peter."

Despair is a tangible pain and Peter tries to breathe but it's like swallowing water. It's the same as he felt when Battleworld turned from darkness to daylight. When Peter realized just what Battleworld's new sun was. _Who_ Battleworld's sun was.

Johnny. Burning up in the sky on full Nova. Stuck there by Doom's whimsy. Screaming in pain for sixteen hours a day, on and on with only the briefest of respite to sleep, before beginning the cycle again.

When the simulation ended, when it turned out Battleworld was just a world-wide hallucination, it meant Johnny hadn't burned Nova for that time. But everything they'd felt was real. Everything Peter had feared Johnny felt, he'd felt.

The events weren't real, but the pain was.

Every night, Peter had looked up into the dark of the night sky, wondering whether Johnny was going to have the strength to light up again, come morning, or whether the Battleworld was going to stay in eternal darkness.

Darkness suited a world without Johnny Storm in it.

"I burned for all of you," Johnny says, in an uneven tone. "I know it wasn't real. I know I didn't actually go Nova for days on end. But it felt like it, Pete. And the kicker is — I didn't know it wasn't real at the time. I didn't know the world would be okay if I didn't burn. And I think I deserve some damned _respect_ for that _._ "

"You do," Peter says, thickly.

"Then why are you treating me like I let everyone down?" Johnny demands. "What did I do wrong?"

Peter hangs his head, speaks into the carpet. "Nothing. You didn't do anything wrong."

"Is this actually what's going on here?" Johnny demands. "I'm seriously getting a _it's not you, it's me_ from my best friend?" Johnny shakes his head, disgusted. "Fuck this noise. I'm outta here." Johnny gets to his feet, hands clenching into aborted fists, and he strides to the door, anger palpable in the air.

Peter stands, desperate, because Johnny can't leave, he _can't_. Yet, he'd be stupid to do anything but leave, because Peter's a wreck, a wretch, a goddamned fool. He can't settle on what he wants to say, or do, but he knows to his core that letting Johnny walk out of his apartment right now would be the biggest mistake of his life. Considering the litany of mistakes his life biography is made up of, that's saying something.

It's probably why his next words burst out before he can think them through. "I'm just tired of losing people who matter to me!"

It's a toss-up as to who looks more surprised by the outburst.

Johnny freezes, hand still outstretched to the door.

It's like there's no air in the room, and Peter hauls in oxygen as best as he can even though it feels like he's pulling in poison, his body shuddering like he's been fighting for hours and there's still a thousand enemies to go.

"What?" Johnny turns and his expression is probably decipherable, but Peter's too out of it to understand anything but the burning lump in his throat that won't go away until he's choked the words out.

He doesn't want to say the words again. They're jagged knives in his mouth. But Johnny deserves the truth, deserves it and a thousand things more. Johnny burned for them, over and over, burned from the inside out, not knowing it wasn't really happening. Not knowing the world would be okay if he stopped and let himself go.

"I'm tired of losing people who matter to me," Peter says, forcing the words out. He glares at Johnny, running on nothing but adrenaline. "I'm just— I know it wasn't real, but— Every night, Johnny. Every night you went dark and I thought, this is it. I'm never going to see your light again. Night after night, you died for me. And I can't take it. I can't take it happening even one more time. I can't."

Johnny moves forwards, slowly, cautious, like he's approaching a wounded cat, and Peter thinks for a moment he's moving to hear Peter better, like maybe Peter's thoughts are spilling out of his mouth in a whisper and Johnny needs to be closer to hear them, but Peter's not saying anything. He can't. The words are a tangled knot in his mouth and he can't pull them apart. Not until Johnny steps right into his personal space and, damn him, pulls Peter closer. Pulls Peter in until Johnny's arms are around him, until he's holding Peter upright, and Peter's body is a traitor, because he melts into the embrace even though he should be running away and screaming.

"You shouldn't," Peter says, "you _shouldn't_ —"

Johnny makes a choked laughing sound and just holds on, making nonsensical noises, a soft shushing, like Peter's crying. Oh. Maybe Peter's crying. "C'mon, Pete. C'mon. Feel me. I'm right here, okay? I'm okay. It didn't kill me. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, yeah?"

"I'm just so tired of losing you," Peter says, and it's easier to talk like this, into Johnny's neck, like he can pretend the words are just huffs of heated air, invisible and painless. When really, they're gutting him open. After this, Johnny's going to disappear into thin air, because it's for the best. It has to be. "I can't— I can't—"

"Shush," Johnny says, his hands tugging him closer, gripping him tight. "Shush, Pete. It's fine. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

"You can't say that," Peter says. "You can't know that. You'll die, or I will, and it'll hurt, I just—"

Johnny moves his hands then, grips Peter's face, pulls it so that Peter can't look away. "That's called life, kiddo. People die. And it sucks. But you can't cut people out of your life. Not if you care about them. Then you'll just stop remembering how to care for people. Hell, that's how you become Victor Von Doom."

"Johnny—" Peter says.

"Nope, nu-uh," Johnny says. "You don't get to Johnny me. Not when you're trying to be a self-sacrificing asshole, putting aside inconvenient human emotion for the good of the many."

"That's not—"

"That's _exactly_ what you're doing," Johnny says. "It's kind of a superhero cliché by now. Hell, I think I've even thought of pulling it myself."

"Really?"

"I did for a while. Sometimes I wonder whether giving up my powers was a heroic thing, or just a dramatic way of quitting."

"That's not exactly the same."

"What, you wanna argue semantics?" Johnny quirks an eyebrow. "When you've spent weeks trying to break up with me and we're not even dating yet?"

"Well, that's not—" Peter starts, and stops. His face heats. " _Yet_?"

"If you're trying to pretend you're not hopelessly in love with me, webhead, you're not exactly putting in an Emmy-award winning performance," Johnny says, his thumb moving to trace the curve of Peter's right cheekbone.

"I'm not—" Peter starts to say, but he's cut off by the warm press of Johnny's mouth to his, and before he can even think it through, he's kissing back, unable to stop himself. Johnny's mouth is so warm. He kisses like _hello_ and _I like my body against yours_ and _this has been a long time coming._ "Johnny," Peter manages, when they break apart, when he rests his forehead against Johnny's and tries to remember how to breathe.

"I like that _Johnny_ better than the other _Johnny_ s you said earlier," Johnny says, one hand sliding into around the base of Peter's neck, fingers tangling into his hair. Peter tries not to do something embarrassing, like full-body shiver, or start purring. "It sounds less like you're trying to rip your heart from your chest, more like you might invite me into your bed."

" _Johnny._ "

"Ah, the scandalized version of my name," Johnny says through a smile. "I didn't miss that when I was up in the sky."

"Johnny," Peter says, and it's possibly all he can say. Maybe it's all he can ever say again. Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. You're a bad idea. You're everything. I'd miss you too much if you left. _Johnny._

"And I wish I could kiss away every miserable Johnny you say," Johnny says. "I've always wanted to."

"Then why—"

"You're tired of losing people," Johnny says, like it's that simple. "And I'm tired of not making the most of people while they're around."

"I'm not—" Peter tries to say again. _I'm not in love with you._ It's just six words. Why can't he say them? "I'm not—"

Johnny's face does something soft, something hopelessly endearing. "It's okay."

"It's not," Peter says, trying to shake his head, but Johnny's holding him too close and nothing makes sense, and nothing feels real apart from where Johnny's touching him, anchoring him to the earth. Johnny's there, and real, and not going anywhere. Not if Peter can do anything to stop it.

"If it helps any," Johnny says, "I'm kind of hopelessly in love with you too. It's how I kept burning."

Something in Peter's chest burns again, because no, this isn't happening. _No._

"I could have stopped any time," Johnny says. "Fail Sue's punishment and let Doom just kill me. But I lit up every morning because I couldn't bear the idea of you in darkness." He smirks, a smirk diluted by fondness. "Tell anyone I've been this sentimental and I'll deny it."

"No one would believe me anyway," Peter says, even though he'd taken a deep breath to really say it this time, to say that he's not in love with Johnny Storm.

 _Liar,_ says a voice in his head. And it's a memory, or it's his imagination. Gwen. _Gwendy._

She'd been part of the simulation too. As far as Peter knows, there may not be a multiverse out there where Gwen's alive and he's dead, and that's just another tragedy in the whole mess Arno Stark has made of the world.

He likes to think it's all true anyway. That Spider-Gwen's really out there. All the Spiders. All the Peter Parkers. And even in the Battleworld, where there could be a hundred different versions of anyone, scattered across Doom's playgrounds, there'd only been one Johnny Storm.

And he'd continued to burn.

Because he hadn't wanted Peter to wait in the darkness.

All Peter wants is for Johnny to be safe. That's all he wants. Johnny safe, and alive, and happy, and whole, and—

Oh. Oh.

That's why he's been so upset. That's why the memory of Johnny up in the sky had been nothing but pain, like Peter was burning up alongside him, every single minute of daylight.

Because Johnny's right.

Peter's in love with him.

That's why it had hurt so much. That's why he couldn't look at Johnny, once the world reset, once the Battleworld and the incursions melted away like the worst nightmare. Because if he looked at Johnny, really looked, then he wouldn't be able to ignore his feelings any more.

He'd only survived the Battleworld because he told himself that Johnny was a friend. If he'd admitted to the love, maybe he would have just broken down. Peter had spent the last few weeks wanting to pull back from Johnny. He hadn't known it was already too late. He hadn't realized there wasn't an escape for either of them.

"You can stop crying sometime soon," Johnny says. "I'd really like it I could make out with my boyfriend for the first time without him crying all over me. Gotta say, your tears, they're not that attractive."

Peter wipes at his face. Yeah, there are tears, but they're relief and joy. Not grief. Not now. And hopefully not anymore. "You're impossible," Peter says, and he means it in a positive way, because Johnny was a star and Peter's spent years wishing on him.

"But you like me anyway," Johnny says, misreading it as a criticism and still finding the positive in it. Relentless light: that's what Johnny Storm is. It's not just his power. It's his personality. And Peter's pulled to the beacon of it, like any insect besotted by the light. Getting burned is just part of loving fire, Peter supposes.

"Yeah," Peter admits, the truth settling into his body, displacing the tension and misery he's been carrying since the world woke up. "Yeah, I do."

Johnny's smile in response to that is brighter than when he was Battleworld's sun.


End file.
